#BlackLivesMatter

I woke up yesterday in a foul mood. My vacation didn’t go well. As usual, high expectations mixed with family of origin issues, parenting under duress and way too many hours in the car led to lots and lots of hurt feelings. I messed up some stuff and am having a hard time getting past it.

Then I saw the morning news. Philando Castile was shot and killed  and my heart is broken for him, for his family, and for our community.

It was Thursday- I needed to write my newsletter but I couldn’t seem to find my words to speak against racism and fear. I started to say something but got lost in my own pain and defensiveness. Then I woke this morning to the police shootings and the pain just deepens.

My defensiveness wants to make sure people know that I stand on the side of Black Lives Matter. I want people to know that I lie in personal fear because I have 5 nephews who are African American boys/men. I want you to know that I get it.

But mostly I fear the truth.

I am racist.

I grew up in a racist society with white privilege and I know that my bias is a work in progress.

When I was a young therapist starting in this field, my racist reactions impacted my work. My mistakes didn’t kill anyone but they were still dangerous.

I played the white savior when I became a foster mom at 24, believing what the media sold me as a crack problem in the African American community. The story certainly looks different today.

I went through 7 years of education to be a therapist without anyone talking to me about institutional racism or intergenerational trauma. I took a class on cultural diversity but wasn’t taught to deconstruct racism from my view of mental health. No one challenged me. No one called me out.

Maybe the only thing that saved me is that I did learn humility. I knew that there was a ton that I didn’t know.

I let my clients teach me. I let the African American women I worked with at the domestic abuse shelter show me my bias about their families, about their background, about their values. I let the teen gang members teach me about the pressures and fears of their neighborhoods. I let my staff teach me about teaching your kids to act right in public, to live with the risk of a racist community. I let my colleagues teach me about needing to be better, to stand straighter and to choose each word carefully when filling the shoes of the professional. I searched out mentors and trainings and read books written by people of color. I listened and shut my damned mouth.

And yet I still have my first racist response. I wondered what Mr. Castile “did” before he was shot. I wondered if he in some way had “asked for it”. In my privilege I want to turn away from the painful truth of our world…but this one is my neighborhood and I can’t make this one be about “those people”. These were my cops

As a white woman I know I have a huge responsibility to end racism. I must speak out. I must allow the African American community to lead me without putting this fight on their shoulders. I will speak out. I will talk to my kids. I will protest and support the actions of our community activists. I will continue to listen.

Today I ask you to be honest with yourself. Take a look at your own racism. Take a look at the racism in your professional life. Take a look at the racism in your neighborhood. Don’t step back from this- step in.

Here are a few links that I think might be helpful.

About talking to kids. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/parenting/wp/2015/07/06/how-silence-can-breed-prejudice-a-child-development-professor-explains-how-and-why-to-talk-to-kids-about-race/

About what we can do.

http://www.justinccohen.com/blog/2016/7/6/advice-for-white-folks-in-the-wake-of-the-police-murder-of-a-black-person